Flunking the Intelligence Test

The hostage takers in Mumbai didn't need to wonder how large an armed rescue team the Indian government was sending, or when to anticipate its arrival. They had only to click on the nearest TV set, and there was the federal home minister, Shivraj Patil, obliviously telling viewers that 200 commandos had taken off on the two-hour flight from New Delhi at 2:30 a.m. Even after the aircraft had landed in Mumbai, the gunmen had plenty of time to get ready, as the troops were herded aboard rickety transport buses to be hauled from the city's northern edge to its southern tip. The commandos finally reached the scene about 6:30, roughly nine hours after the terrorists had launched their murderous attacks in the financial capital of India. The battle would drag on for the next two days while the body count reached 195 before the last gunman went down.

In Mumbai and throughout India, people reacted the way Americans did after September 11: they demanded to know why their government had failed to protect them. "Since November last year I have been drawing attention to the iceberg of jihadi terrorism," says B. Raman, a former top official at India's equivalent of the CIA, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). "The government of [Prime Minister] Manmohan Singh reacted to the repeated warning signals of the moving iceberg in the same way as the Bush administration reacted to reports about the plans of the Al Qaeda for aviation terrorism in the U.S.—it just didn't react. It was in a denial mode."

Maybe that's why no one seems to have drawn up any guidelines for handlingterrorist emergencies. Security professionals could only groan infrustration at Patil's televised lack of discretion on the commandodeployment. Under mounting public anger, Patil finally resigned and a fewother officials came under pressure to quit. In any case, these are hardlythe Indian officials with a role in this bloody disaster. The problem issystemic in India, international security analysts say. "There is afrightening lack of strong and decisive political leadership in dealing withthis menace," says Wilson John, a terrorism expert and senior fellow at theObserver Research Foundation in New Delhi. "This incompetence and lethargyseeps all the way down to the level of beat constable."

About an hour before the shooting started, villagers on the shore in South Mumbai saw a group of 10 young strangers climbing out of an inflatable raft. The incident was reported to local police, who did nothing. The cops might have displayed more interest if their superiors had given them a heads-up. About four months ago the president of the fishermen's union, Damodar Tandel, received a warning from a colleague in the coastal state of Gujarat: of the nearly 1,000 fishing boats that shuttle between Gujarat and Mumbai, some might be smuggling munitions and plastic explosives into the city, the friend said. Tandel relayed the message in a letter to the police chief in charge of Mumbai's port. The chief was asked about that letter last week, during the terrorist siege. "It was just a general statement," he said. "There was no specific information."

That's the kind of thing that infuriates people like India's No. 1 industrialist, Ratan Tata. "It has become clear that we don't have a crisis infrastructure in place," he told reporters, as terrorists remained holed up inside the city's landmark Taj Mahal Palace & Tower hotel, which his company owns. Proof of his complaint was all too evident after another gang seized hostages at a hospital not far away. The state's antiterrorism chief and two other top police officials arrived at the scene with a posse of cops who were armed with antiquated .303 rifles. Seemingly unaware of any danger, the three men stood unprotected on the firing line, where they were quickly mowed down by sudden bursts of automatic gunfire. Even then, intelligence sources say, the state government didn't seem to comprehend the magnitude of the attacks. The state's chief minister delayed nearly two hours before requesting specialized assistance from New Delhi. "The militants know and exploit gaping holes in India's counter-terrorism architecture and strategy," says John.

Horrified police officers in Mumbai saw their vehicles hijacked by terrorists who showed intimate knowledge of the city's streets and the layouts of the huge hotels they captured. In contrast, the police displayed no familiarity with the layouts of those buildings. The commandos who flew in from New Delhi had to waste precious time getting hotel staff members to sketch out the layouts of their workplaces. "We've really not learnt the lessons," says M. N. Singh, a former Mumbai police commissioner.